


hope you got your things together

by 40millionyears



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: 5 Things, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, F/M, Gen, Zombie Apocalypse, troperrific
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 23:29:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2559761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/40millionyears/pseuds/40millionyears
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"peralta, i will feed *you* to the goddamn zombies and put everyone out of their respective miseries" (or, an undead apocalypse grows in brooklyn).</p>
            </blockquote>





	hope you got your things together

**Author's Note:**

> so at some point I clearly decided to just completely abandon anything resembling canon or real life. thus this happened, and I’m really sorry about it.

**those bad times today**  
  
It’s one forty-six in the morning and all Rosa wants is to sleep.  But there’s a fresh nest having a midnight snack in South Oxford Park that they’ll have to deal with tomorrow, and they’re making a lot of goddamn noise. The unearthly moans were always worse at night, as though the darkness somehow amplified them across the whole city.  
  
She rolls over in her bunk and laments, for the millionth time, the ridiculous plan to make the Nine-Nine into their base of operations.  
  
(“It’s safer if we all stick together somewhere,” Amy had persisted, after they lost Scully and Hitchcock, “and the precinct is more secure and better equipped than anywhere else.”  
  
“Jesus, Santiago, it’s not my fault you still don’t personally own an axe _._ ”  
  
But then Terry had returned with his wife and daughters in tow, and Charles had started barricading the windows and sorting perishables, and Gina had rolled her eyes with a shrug and gone back to ignoring Amy and trimming her split ends, and so Rosa’s glowering and her subsequent silence had apparently just been taken as a yes vote.)  
  
Today hadn’t been the best day. She’d lost an officer formerly of the 74th – one of their best fighters – to a horde just three blocks away while on patrol. She’d been forced to put her axe through the head of the old man who once ran the bodega next to her apartment building. Her _old_ building, because she now lives in a fucking police station that’s been turned into a command-post-slash-youth-hostel. And on top of everything else, one of the undead had torn her jacket. Now she only had her formal one left, and she did _not_ want to consign it to everyday wear.  
  
“SHUT THE HELL UP,” she yells, mostly to abate her own frustration since, well, it’s not like they’re going to listen to her and politely hold their groaning ‘til a more acceptable hour of the morning.  
  
“They’re just hungry, Rosa!” Jake calls back from his berth across the hall. “Hungry for braiiiiinnnnnns.”  
  
“Peralta, I will feed _you_ to the goddamn zombies and put everyone out of their respective miseries.”  
  
He wisely chooses not to respond, for once, and she rolls over again with a huff.  
  
Rosa wouldn’t know Dr Walter Miller, the scientist who had unwittingly managed to mutate _toxoplasmosa gondii_ into a fast-acting and highly contagious human strain, from a bar of soap, but if he hadn’t already had his brains quite thoroughly eaten she would track him down and murder him herself.  
  
Asshole.  
  
  


 **hope you are quite prepared to die**  
  
“Eddie Ramirez.”  
  
“Oh, definitely. Did you ever see him running in gym? Total goner.”  
  
They’re on sentry duty for the afternoon, roll-y chairs stationed on the edge of the roof with a bag of peanuts between them, taking turns to see who can hit various items on the street below with their empty shells. They’re also playing “are they dead yet?” with various people from their past.  
  
It’s a little gruesome, but they’re in the middle of a fucking zombie apocalypse. Gruesome is where they live now. (Also, if questioned, Jake will unequivocally insist that the game was Gina’s idea, and everybody will believe him.)  
  
“Opposite corner on three,” Jake says, and on his count they grab the peanuts and push off, sending their chairs trundling across the pitted cement to the other side of the roof.  
  
“It’s quiet today,” Gina notes, spinning her chair into position with a flourish and surveying the block quickly before refocusing her attention on the search for chips in her nail polish.  
  
“There was that big fire on Long Island yesterday. Probably has them all distracted.”  
  
Jake’s walkie-talkie squawks, and he grabs it off the ledge. “Whiskey Fox at your service!”  
  
Amy’s sigh is audible through the static. “I thought we vetoed codenames four times already.”  
  
“Negative, Liberty Bell. It’s for your own protection.”  
  
“Whatever. Sarge and Rosa just got back and south of the Pratt looks clear for now.”  
  
“Roger that. Thanks, Deputy Vice Principle. Black Mustang out!”  
  
Tossing the unit on the ground beside him, he turns back to Gina. “Valerie Luskin?”  
  
She ponders for a moment, screwing up her nose. “She was kinda strong. Pretty smart, for someone who had a crush on you. She might have made it.”  
  
Jake throws a peanut shell at a fire hydrant, and squints at a hint of movement. “Incoming, on your left.”  
  
Gina checks her manicure once more – she’s down to her last few bottles of polish now that some _savage_ had completely smashed up the only safely reachable Sephora, and a girl’s gotta be thrifty - and barely glances up as she nails the lone approaching zombie square in the head with a single shot. Her rapid improvement in gun handling had astonished everyone, to which she’d responded by offering a lazy smirk and, by way of explanation, “self preservation, boo.”  
  
"Nice."  
  
“Everything I do is nice, lil pup. Didn’t we actually kill what was left of Valerie last month?”  
  
“Ugh, you’re right. Bummer.”  
  
“Dead list.”  
  
  


 **trouble on the way**  
  
They’ve got the system pretty well perfected by now. A team of two hits the streets twice a day, starting at about 10.30 every morning after Terry’s mandatory daily group workout.  
  
(“Do you want to be the one to get eaten because you can’t outrun a dead guy?” he’d demanded when Jake had suggested that he would prefer to sleep in instead. “We have to stay in shape if we’re gonna make it through this. Fitness. Is. Crucial.”  
  
“They used to let me run in the girl’s relay races on account of my delicate build,” Boyle had added, as they did jumping jacks in unison on the roof.)  
  
The TV and radio stations have shut down, and internet connections are pretty hit-and-miss these days what with a lot of network operators un-dying, so they don’t really know what’s going on beyond the patch of Brooklyn they’d taken to defending. They just go out, and they kill the zombies that need killing, and they hope that other people are doing the same thing everywhere else.  
  
They know there are others out there in New York, those who stayed to fight (or just endure) like they did, but people tend to keep to themselves these days. Drawing unnecessary attention to yourself can end, more often than not, with a nasty case of brain-craving insanity.  
  
The sun is out, the birds are singing (smug bastards, all high and mighty because bird zombies aren’t a thing yet), and Jake and Charles head north up Flatbush as per the usual rotation, keeping an eye out for any new activity.  
  
Twelve blocks up, they see shadows moving in an alleyway. As they approach the entrance, three figures whirl around, guns pointed, and Jake sighs in relief.  
  
“Teddy, dude, that’s how people get shot.”  
  
They see Teddy and his crew once in a while, on the occasion that their chosen zones intersect. Being that they’re all on the same rapidly diminishing team, they’ve almost become friends.  
  
“Sorry, man. Can’t be too careful. You remember Jamie and Liz?”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, hey guys. How’s it going?”  
  
“Alive, tired, hungry… the usual. You guys?”  
  
“Zombie free and proud of it.”  
  
“Any word of your captain?” Teddy asks, genuine concern on his face, and Jake supposes he can see why Amy dated him.  
  
But he doesn’t know what to say, because he still doesn’t _know_. The Captain had been accompanying Kevin to a conference at Berkeley when the virus broke out, and they haven’t heard from him in a couple of months, since the phones stopped working. But Jake’s not worried. There’s a lot of miles between them and Berkeley, and (he’s making an educated guess) a hell of a lot of zombies. He and Kevin are probably methodically and unsmilingly working their way through them all.  
  
Holt will be back.  
  
He claps Teddy on the shoulder in lieu of an answer, nods at the other two. Charles gives them some of the custom trail mix he’d cobbled together (“try it drizzled with some sriracha, if you’ve hit up any of the Thai restaurants; it’s like a party for your tongue!”), and they part ways.  
  
It’s always nice to know that they’re not the only ones out there trying to save a bit of New York for whatever happens after.

 

 **we’re in for nasty weather**  
  
Jake returns from their bi-weekly scavenger hunt with a full backpack and a wide, self-satisfied grin.  
  
“Presents for everyone! Santa will set up in the briefing room, but you have to sit on his lap to get your gift. My lap. It’s my lap.”  
  
He dodges a punch to the shoulder from Rosa and spills his spoils out onto the table, a stray apple escaping across the floor.  
  
“Jake, where did you get all this?” Amy asks, eyeing the smorgasbord of food and supplies with barely restrained wonder. “We haven’t seen fruit in like three weeks.”  
  
“Amy, sweet Amy. My years of dedicated and advanced Boy Scout training have given me unparalleled survival and hunting skills.”  
  
“That’s the story you wanna go with?” Rosa asks with a snort.  
  
“Ugh, fine, I got lucky. Found a market with a trashed entrance. The rubble was surprisingly easy to pick through and it was only lightly ransacked, so tonight we feast.”  
  
He digs through the pile, fishing for treasure to dole out like an oversized elf.    
  
“For you, and for you,” he says theatrically, handing Rosa a pouch of .357 cartridges and Amy a semi-clean skein of wool. He tosses Charles a packet of teriyaki beef jerky and puts aside some deodorant and tissues to add to the bathroom stockpile.  
  
“And for you, m’lady,” he finishes, solemnly presenting Gina with six new bottles of nail polish and a battered issue of _Us Weekly_ that’s five months old _._ She beams up at him, and he presses his lips to her forehead with a loud smack.  
  
And then they settle down to wait out the night. For all the chaos swirling around them, there’s a surprisingly large amount of downtime. Amy has knitted enough winter hats and scarves to keep the entire (pre-zombie) population of Rhode Island warm, as well as sweaters adorned with every woodland creature imaginable for Gina. She’d proclaimed them “abhorrences of nature” whilst simultaneously insisting on wearing a different one every night.   
  
They read, and they play games, and they cook (okay, Charles cooks, because he's appointed himself sole custodian of the scant herb and spice supply). Other than the growing army of brain-hungry creatures on their doorstep and the fact that they can no longer order Chinese takeout, it almost feels normal.  
  
Almost.  
  
“I wish my babies didn’t have to grow up like this,” Terry says out of the blue, from the break room table where he’s mid-Scrabble grunge-match with Sharon and Boyle.  
  
“Yeah, I think we’re past the point of wishing that now, Ter-Bear,” Gina drawls from her position on the floor, painting Lacey’s toenails with her newly replenished stash.  
  
"Thank you, Gina, I know that. I just... wanted so many things for them. Not this."  
  
“They’ve still got you guys,” Rosa points out, carving an apple into slices with one of her smaller knives. “They’re gonna be fine. And they’re learning life skills. Cagney knows how to use nunchucks."  
  
“And who taught her _that,_ Diaz?”  
  
Rosa shrugs, unperturbed. “I sensed potential.”

  
  
**the end is coming soon**

The worst kept secret amongst their little crew is that Jake and Amy are totally, hopelessly into one another, even more so now that the chance of finding another eligible partner anytime soon has largely gone out the window.  
  
(Well, that’s the second worst kept secret. The worst is that Gina and Boyle have had sex on every single desk in the bullpen. And most of the chairs. And the floor.  
  
Any furniture in the break room probably isn’t safe either.  
  
Amy’s taken to sitting on a plastic bag. The outside world may have gone to shit, but that doesn’t mean her hygiene has to.)  
  
The best-kept secret is that they gave into those feelings one night not long after the zombie plague first struck; out on a patrol, Jake had had a close call with a group of former linebackers intent on using his head as the ball, and had barely escaped. Amy had dragged him through the precinct door and checked him over for any sign of bites or broken skin, alternately berating him for being careless and reciting a litany of ways in which his death would really suck.  
  
He’d kissed her. She’d ripped off his shirt. They’d done it in the records room. Twice. It was a love story for the ages.  
  
And now it’s a few months down the line and it’s been a particularly vicious week. Lots of new zombies, some familiar faces. Word that the plague has spread over far more of the world than they previously thought and a cure isn't looking likely. Huge, actual-apocalypse-level storms, so their supplies are starting to run low. And water pipes that have finally stopped working, meaning she hasn’t showered in about four days.  
  
But they’ve still managed to hide their relationship thus far, and Amy is _not_ about to break that record on account of Jake’s midday horniness.  
  
“Jake, I am greasy and disgusting and you don’t want to be anywhere near me,” she says, batting his hand away as she inventories their ammo.  
  
“I always want to be near you,” he replies. “And if you think greasiness is a turn off, I have a few fantasies that I probably need to share, in the interest of keeping things honest.”  
  
“Cute, and also gross, but it’s not happening.” She softens her words with a fond glance in his direction.  
  
“Come on, Amy! Look outside. The sky is dark, the food is running out, zombie horsemen are probably on the horizon. We need to reaffirm our lives! End of the world sex. It’s the best kind.”  
  
She rolls her eyes. “The world hasn’t ended yet, Peralta.”  
  
He offers her a hopeful smile. “Thank-god-the-world-hasn’t-ended-yet sex?”  
  
Amy doesn’t know how long this whole mess is going to last. She doesn’t know what it’s going to look like on the other end, if they make it there, and she definitely doesn't know what happens after that. But she knows that the man next to her has _been_ next to her through it all. So she looks around the silent precinct, double-checking the schedule outlined on the whiteboard to make sure the patrols aren’t due back anytime soon and that all impressionable minors are elsewhere and accounted for.  
  
“Thank god we’re both still in it,” she corrects him, and pulls him by the hand to Babylon. 

**Author's Note:**

> for shits and giggles, here is a partial list of things I googled while writing this:  
> \- "how would a zombie apocalypse start?"  
> \- "songs about the end of the world"  
> \- "can children use nunchucks?" (I highly recommend watching the youtube videos that come up)  
> \- "best gun to use on zombies"  
> \- "what non-perishable food does sriracha taste good on?"  
> \- "doomsday signs"  
> \- 6th & Bergen on Google Maps, enough times that I'm probably on a watch-list somewhere
> 
> also there's no real timeline, but in my head, the first section is about six weeks after the outbreak.


End file.
